Last year, I got some (friendly) critique saying I always shoot wide when taking photos. So I got a long lens and started moving closer. But I gravitate to what’s comfortable, resulting in a bunch of not-exactly-wide, not-exactly-close, extra shmedium shots. Still trying. Versatility is good. But wide is beautiful, so I’ll just own it.

In 2012, I helped launch Roads & Kingdoms. The rest of the team did all the hard work: they published the best food/travel/culture writing, they won awards to back up that statement, they brought on Anthony Bourdain as a partner and investor, and now they’re releasing their first book with HarperCollins.

I’m still trying to figure out how the hell Douglas Hughmanick found the time to design every stunning page of this book — in between buying a house, having his first child and growing a successful design agency. Doug, whatever unholy scheme you’re taking part in to obtain unlimited energy… I want in.

Well, there are about 350 television shows about the affluent America, the comfortable America, the viable and cohesive nation where everyone gets what they want if they either work hard or know someone or have a pretty face or cheat like hell. That America is available every night […] For a brief time, there was one television drama about the other America.

He might swallow hard, seize the moment and say something along the lines of, “Mr. President. I know you’ve said you’re a fan of The Wire. Well, one of that show’s basic critiques is that the drug war is amoral. More Americans are now in prison than ever before, and the percentage of violent offenders in prison is lower than ever. We are now the jailingest society in the world, incarcerating

more of each other than even totalitarian states. How can we go on supporting this?”

Balls out like that. Truth to power, brah. Get some.

Instead, to use a sportswriting cliché, Simmons choked, throwing up an ugly brick at the buzzer: “Who’s the best character in The Wire?”

What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has.

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged [...] No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

The classes aren’t just in film studies or media studies departments; they’re turning up in social science disciplines [...] Some sociologists and social anthropologists, it turns out, believe The Wire has something to teach their students about poverty, class, bureaucracy, and the social ramifications of economic change.

Spoiler alert. These reviews touch on how scenes connect to & impact future events on the show. An excerpt about the chess scene in Episode 3:

Bodie and Wallace using the chess board to play checkers — a fine game, but a simpler one [...] are standing in for every TV crime drama that preceded “The Wire.” They had the same pieces at their disposal, but they chose to play an easier game with more instant gratification.

During our post-finale interview, Simon and I talked about how all 3 characters in the chess scene eventually wound up dead — and at the hands of their employers, at that: “We knew that if we got a long enough run, all 3 of the chess players would be out of the game.

It was real to the point where crackheads would come up and try to cop [...] and I’d make the exchange. Then security would come around and be like, “No! No! No!” and break it up. I was like, “Oh, shit! That’s really a crack-head! I’m sorry! I’m not really a drug dealer!”

All you see’s
a bunch of “what the fucks”
Dude is dating so and so,
blabbering ‘bout such & such.
And that ain’t Jersey Shore.
Homie, that’s the news.
And these the same people
supposedly telling us the truth.

Not surprisingly, the most interesting characters for me are Peggy & Sally:

Behind the smooth-talking, chain-smoking, misogynist advertising executives on “Mad Men” is a group of women writers [creating] a world where the men are in control and the women are more complex than they seem, or than the male characters realize.

COO of Facebook, a former Google VP, now on Obama's advisory council on jobs and the boards of Disney and Starbucks (though she's leaving this year as Facebook files for IPO.)

She neither flaunts nor hides her ambition, and she talks about her guilt at not being home more; she takes command in meetings, yet she’s comfortable describing Mark Zuckerberg as “my boss,” and as “the Steve Jobs of his generation.” She is emblematic, Gruenfeld thinks, of a post-feminist woman who believes that “when you blame someone else for keeping you back, you are accepting your powerlessness.”

There are also, of course, still remnants of “Mad Men”-era sexism. Dina Kaplan, the co-founder of Blip.tv, says that when she met with angel investors to raise funds she dressed nicely, and in a meeting with a potential funder he told her, “Here’s what we do, Dina. We’re going to spend half the meeting with you pitching me, and half the meeting with me hitting on you!”

“I felt nauseous,” she says. “I tried to laugh it off. I asked, ‘Of all the things you’re working on, what most excites you?’ He said, ‘Seeing you naked tonight.’ ”

[The founder of Spanx] owns 100% of the private company, has zero debt, has never taken outside investment and hasn’t spent a nickel on advertising [...] The company is now run by a team of 125, only 16 of them men.

And their father who believes success is earned through hard work, not innate talent.

[Susan] dominated the New York Open chess competition. At 16 she crushed several adult opponents and landed on the front page of The New York Times. [...] Susan’s raven-haired sister Sophia, 11, swept most of the games in her section, too. But the pudgy baby of the family, 9-year-old Judit, drew the most gawkers of all. To onlookers’ delight, Judit took on five players simultaneously and beat them. She played blindfolded.

When Susan was 21, she became the first woman ever to earn the designation Grandmaster [...] Judit picked up the honor the same year, at age 15. She was a few months younger than Bobby Fischer was when he won the title.

Susan once said she never won against a healthy man. [...] men always had some excuse after losing a game to a woman: “It must have been my headache.”

In that comfort zone, we say the meanest kind of things,” she explained. “If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.”

Offstage, Fey is playful but proper. On the air, her delivery is like a lash— “Hey, kids, it’s the great women of U.S. history! Collect all ten!” or “This is the hardest Bush has worked since that time he tried to walk home from Mardi Gras”—followed by a self-deprecating smile. Nearly all Fey’s colleagues mentioned her ability to be mean and disarming at the same time. I heard her humor variously described as “hard-edged,” “vicious,” and “cruel.”

Fey saw an entertainment reporter on TV say [...] Fey hadn’t been gracious toward Palin. “[...] Who would ever go on the news and say, ‘Well, I thought it was sort of mean to Richard Nixon when Dan Aykroyd played him,’ and ‘That seemed awful mean to George Bush when Will Ferrell did it.’” “Mean,” we agreed, was a word that tends to get used on women who do satirical humor and, as she says, “gay guys.”

An essay she wrote in 2011 about impending career & life deadlines and the industry's view on aging women.

I have observed that women, at least in comedy, are labelled “crazy” after a certain age.

I know older men in comedy who can barely feed and clean themselves, and they still work. The women, though, they’re all “crazy.” [...] the definition of “crazy” in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore.

The only person I can think of who has escaped the “crazy” moniker is Betty White, which, obviously, is because people still want to have sex with her.

You were a 70's baby? And you…33now?You know where real good rappers careers should be when they33? — Wow.When Nas was33he premiered “Hip Hop Is Dead”Now that Ness is33his career in hip hop is deadWhen Jay was33Hov worked to build “The Blueprints”When Em was33he’d sold 30 million units!And Biggie Smalls’ status as a legend’s quite clear.
And when he was33HE’D BEEN DEAD FOR 9 YEARS!

Had an amazing time yesterday catching up with Caleb, who found his way to Portland for the first time.

During a 12 hour wandering tour of downtown, we got ourselves some coffee (Cloud Seven Cafe), lunch (Kenny & Zuke’s Deli) and drinks (Clyde Common, Bailey’s Tap Room, Portland City Grill and Life of Riley) while accumulating a posse, one straggler at a time. In order of appearance: Justin, Amanda, Jackie, Zack, Dorinda, Corey and Mary.

Now to share some out of context quotes for entertainment purposes only…